Heaven

I love Ethan's age. He is so inquisitive...

A couple months ago Ethan met Ryan's grandparents, so naturally he asked where my grandparents were. He caught me off-guard, and my response probably was not the most appropriate for a 3 year old. "Honey, mommy's grandparents aren't alive anymore, they are dead".

"Oh, why did they die?" he asked.

"Because they became very, very sick and never got better" I said. "Oh...." and that was the end of it. Or so I thought....

A couple days ago we were in the car and out of the blue Ethan says "Are your grandparents still dead mommy?". Clearly I did not explain well before...

"Yes Ethan, they are still dead. Once someone dies they stay that way". Then I realized that sounded very morbid, so I decided to put it in a different light. "They are up in heaven with Jesus now. They are very happy. Heaven is a wonderful place".

He thought about it for a minute. "Is heaven up in the sky?". "Yes Ethan, heaven is way up high in the sky. Jesus and mommy's grandparents are way up there. Did you know they can still look down and see us?".

"Oh. Are there windows up in heaven for them to look through?". My heart melts as he says this. "Yes Ethan" (how else do you explain things?!?).

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Fast forward to last night.

Every night I have the boys go to their rooms and pick out a book for me to read before bedtime. After tucking Drew Drew into bed, I went into Ethan's room to get him down for the night. He was laying in bed smiling, and proudly proclaimed "I have a Jesus book for you to read". I looked at the book, and it was a children's bible book he had picked out.

We read through several of the stories, until I realized we were going to be there all night reading if I went through every page (probably why he picked it out!). I skipped towards the back of the book, where it talked about Jesus dying, coming back to life, then going up to heaven. The last statement I read said that Jesus would one day come back for us and take us to heaven with him.

"Mommy, are we going to fly in the sky with Jesus when he takes us to heaven?" Hmmmm, trying to find words and an explanation he would understand......"I don't know for sure honey" ....easy out I know.

"But mommy, am I going to die when he takes me to heaven"....my heart stops for a minute when I hear him utter the words about him dying. Can't even think about that......"no Ethan, if He comes before you die then you get to go right up to heaven. If He doesn't come before you die, you'll go to heaven then. You just have to love Jesus with all your heart and be really good friends with him(something he understand now)." I'm starting to sweat bullets.....wasn't prepared for this conversation.

Well that must have curbed his curiousity about the death-issue, because then he started talking about how we could use lots of balloons to go up to heaven, and Jesus would catch us when we let go of the balloons (I have a feeling he got that from the Curious George movie).

Oh, if we could all think like 3 year olds once in a while!